A Voyage from San Francisco to Tahiti 421 



warmly welcomed. I lay down and 

 slept till near dinner time. Then I 

 dined in state on the portico with Tati 

 and his two vSons. Our dinner was of 

 soup, fish, dressed in native style, with 

 cocoanuts, shrimps, and I forget what 

 else. 



The manner of these sons was very 

 good, and to their father it was most 

 respectful. I noticed a prett}^ cover on 

 a table, which Tati said was a chief's 

 mat. He offered to get one for me. 



Tati, whom I had met in Washington, 

 is the son of a native mother and 

 a white father, and his family, a very 

 ancient one, is still one of the most 

 prominent, as he is one of the best edu- 

 cated and most intelligent, of the island- 

 ers. He mentioned to me that the chiefs 

 were much at war in his great-grand- 

 father's time, and that the object being 

 to get the heads of their enemies, these 

 were cut off and buried by the relatives 

 of the dead in some secret place. Tati 

 said also that the heads of some of his 

 own family were buried in a place in the 

 mountains, whose position he only ap- 

 proximately knew, the secret of the 

 exact locality being kept by some old 

 member of the clan. I have heard from 

 others that his great-grandfather had 

 large ideas of housekeeping. There is 

 on the island a pitcher plant holding two 

 or three tablespoonfuls of water; and, 

 according to tradition, the old chief oc- 

 casionally had a thousand men or so 

 marched up in the morning, each with 

 a pitcher plant stuck in the right ear, 

 and the emptied contents formed the 

 great man's bath. 



After dinner I opened a topic which 

 proved interesting to us all, the ' ' super- 

 natural ' ' of the island. We talked for 

 two hours, and I heard of the " fire- 

 walking. ' ' One of Tati' s sons said that 

 he, at a fire- walk given in Tahiti three 

 3'ears before, having on shoes, had fol- 

 lowed the barefooted priest over the 

 "red-hot" stones, and that his shoes 

 were not burned in the least. 



Jzdy 12. — This morning I started at 

 8.30 and drove to Papeete, stopping for 

 a bath in a stream, and getting in at 

 about 2 ; breakfasted at the execrable 

 restaurant, went to the ship, and then 

 came to Apouhara Salmon's, a son of 

 Tati's, where a room had been pro- 

 cured for me. Here I spent the after- 

 noon. Just opposite is a large open 

 space where the natives congregate with 

 drums and sing ' ' himinies ' ' in prepara- 

 tion for the fete, and the place is not 

 silent ! Apouhara had gone out in the 

 morning to meet me, but missed me on 

 the way. I saw his wife, who is the 

 daughter of the queen of a neighboring 

 island, and Miss Salmon, Tati's sister, 

 a very intelligent aijd agreeable lady. 



July rj. — Drove out alone this morn- 

 ing to the Fatoua stream, described in 

 IvOti' s ' ' Rarahu " * as the bathing place. 

 The pools he mentions are gone, I am 

 told, but I drove up the side road along 

 the bank of the stream for at least two 

 miles, and came to a long, deep pool, 

 shaded by trees and high hills. It is 

 about 200 feet long and over head in the 

 middle. The water is just cool enough, 

 an ideal bath. As we rode back, I got 

 some fresh cocoanuts from the trees, and 

 drank all the water from one of them, 

 eating part of the snowy cup. Oh, the 

 pleasant memory ! 



I came back to Apouhara' s, when I 

 met Tati's son, who had taken part in 

 the former fire-walking ceremony. I 

 asked him to breakfast with me at the 

 "Hotel du Louvre," which he did. 

 There I saw a copy of the Wide World 

 of June I, containing an illustrated ac- 

 count of the recent fire-walking cere- 

 mony in Honolulu, conducted by the 

 old native priest, Papa-Ita, a man of 

 about sixty years of age, who is in town, 

 and to whom young Tati introduced me. 

 He is not the high priest (who lives in 

 one of the Windward Islands), but a 

 disciple, and he says he will give an ex- 



* Pierre Loti, "Rarahu," 1880, reprinted 1882 

 under the title " Le Marriage de Loti." 



